Week 26.docx

Week 26 - Hollywood and theArt of Film / Review
review:
- 8 General Characteristics of the CHC
1. Individual characters as causal agents
2. Character desires and goals (public goal and private goal)
3. Obstacles: leading to conflict
4. Change: development; “character arc”
5. Unrestricted over Restricted Narration (Range of story information)
6. Objective over Subjective Narration (Depth of story information)
7. Time: order, duration, frequency
8. Narrative Development (beginning of a film, narrative development, ending of a
film [closure])
Classical hollywood cinema: similar to European cinema, produced outside narrative mode.
Dominant Hollywood cinema is narrative. In a narrative film, personal traits, etc. determine the
outcome for characters, and they react to their own effects blah blah blah. They encounter
obstacles and because of those obstacles change occurs. Change causes development over the
course of the film to create start, middle, end. 3-point lighting system, shot without drwing
attention to editing/sound.
lecture outline:
- art cinema – very beginning of cinema, trying to draw the middle classes into cinema.
Approached film as art rather than entertainment (french avant-garde, Italian realist films)
often look at erotic topics. Included things like strip teases, but they aroused sadness and
angers the viewers to try and portray a different issue than Hollywood films did. This was
then dominated byAmerican directors. The autour theory legitimated art cinema as a
whole.
Narrative codes are disturbed, lines are fragmented so there is no seamless cause and effect
story line. Cause and effect chain becomes unclear and interrupted and often disappears
altogether. (think about the breathless movie) it is a realist cinema type. We get real
locations, real problems that people deal with.
Ø history
Ø characteristics – plot lead, more individualized characters.
§ narrative codes and conventions are disturbed
§ looser, unclear, or tenuous cause-and-effect chain
§ realism and authorial expressivity
§ character-based, rather than plot-led, protagonist is often unstable or an
observer. Events may lead to absolutely nothing. They play with the fact
that life is often meaningless, and the character has to find their own
meaning.
· psychological complexity
· reaction vs. action